Stroke Saver: Go Lower By Taking Doubles Out Of Play

A few weeks back, I covered the fact that you want to prepare for your blow up hole. You know that hole where nothing goes right and you end up walking off the green questioning why you even play golf anymore? This Stroke Saver is coming from the same general thought process, but at a bit different angle. You see, normally a blow up hole features something that doesn’t fit your game just right. There’s the long par 4, the par 3 with the smaller green or maybe that par 5 with so much trouble on it that you feel like you just can’t wait to get into some of it. Any way you look at it, you’re doomed, unless you really think hard about it before hand and maybe plan out to beat that blow up hole that always gets you. Taking that a step further, there’s the easy way to play a course and the hard way. The easy way is to have a bogey plan. A bogey plan is how you would virtually eliminate a double bogey from happening on any given hole. Once you plan that out, the worst case scenario you’d see on your card is a simple 5 instead of that dreaded 6. Here’s how you can play for taking doubles off your card.

Begin by looking at the hole. One of my personal favorites for this is the par 4 second at Riverbend. It plays 423 yards from the back tees and has more trouble that ‘doesn’t come in to play’ on it than any other hole I’ve seen. Looking at the hole from the air, you have trouble in the big tree to the right, which is situated in a 20 foot gully to the right, the trouble the other direction with the other big tree that is in another 20 foot hole to the left.  As you approach the green, there’s a bunker to the right and yet another giant tree blocking your line to the right. For a wide open hole, this one pack quite the protective punch. From driving into either one of the gully’s on the hole to catching the tree on the right and kicking the wrong way, there’s plenty of room on this hole to bring 6 or worse into play. Instead of playing the risky ball and going for the green in 2, what about laying back off the tee slightly and playing a controlled 200 yard shot short of the trouble on both sides. From there, you have a nice landing area about 175 yards from your ball that will leave you an easy 30-50 yard wedge to an open hole location. If your short game is sharp, you have a par opportunity, but if not, you have 3 shots to get down from 50 yards for a bogey. You’ve removed that chance of destroying that round by just playing  the hole a touch different.

Those long par 5’s with lot of trouble off the tee are another issue for many people. As you can see on the hole above, There’s trouble found in the bunkers if you play this one safe, but there’s also trouble deeper if you decide to pound away with your driver. A well designed course will have defenses that protect it from the daily player, but also have some challenges that protect it from the longer hitters as well. For this particular par 5, the best play is either a fade over the left bunker – mainly due to the openness of the left side of the tee boxes, or a draw from the right tree line back into the fairway. You want to hit a fade at least 200 yards to clear the left trap, and you want to keep your draw from starting too far right and clipping the trees. The final option is to play this hole a bit differently. Off the tee, this 504 yard par 5 opens up about 175 yards off the tee. You then have a pretty wide landing area for about 30-40 yards if you keep it between the bunkers. Pulling a 180 yard club and placing the ball in the middle of the fairway will leave you 320 yards in to the green. A simple 160 yard shot done twice should part you near the flag. If you aren’t “that accurate” with your 160 yard club, then hit an additional 180 and a 140. Use the yardages you know the best to set up this hole, just plan on taking three good shots to get there rather than two magnificent ones. If you don’t have the distance to get there if you short your tee ball like this, don’t panic, just hit your 180 yard tee shot, then follow that with three good wedges to land comfortably on the green in four for an easy 2 putt bogey. That should keep those doubles from beating you up on these long par 5 holes with trouble everywhere you look.
If you can eliminate the double bogeys from your card on just those long par 4’s and challenging par 5’s, you will quickly win the battle to breaking 90 and even get closer to taking down that 80 mark. It’s easy to forget that the average golfer can regularly post double bogeys during a round, but getting those off your card may be your first step to dropping your handicap and beating your buddies during your next weekend round.